NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I had lunch at Colicchio and Sons, followed by a trip across 10th Avenue to the Chelsea Market, an outstanding food destination. The James Beard Foundation (of which I’m the Chairman) is opening a popup restaurant at Chelsea Market named JBFLtd. I dropped by the restaurant in its final stages of preparation.
JBF Ltd. - James Beard Foundation restaurant pop-up
On this day one year ago: Image of Spring with truly ugly bokeh.
Spring
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – This evening we spent a couple of hours at a party at ICE (the Institute for Culinary Education) celebrating the publication of Nathan Myrvold’s book Modernist Cuisine. (ICE is the cooking school that was founded by Peter Kump, a close friend of James Beard.) Taken with a Panasonic GH2 with 20mm pancake lens.
Carmelized Carrot Soup
On this day one year ago: Chrysler Building from the East Side
Chrysler Building from the far East Side
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – Warren’s “downtown” consists of the Rooster Tail Inn and four shops. One of the shops, Privet House, belongs to Richard Lambertson who has assembled a sensational collection of eclectic stuff. Travel and Leisure piece on downtown Warren. Anyway this is from Privet House’s substantial collection of things for dogs, Shot with my Leica M9 and my new 35mm Summicorn V. II.
On this date a year ago: Do follow this link for more information on this sad memorial.
J. Pol Memorial New Milford, Connecticut
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Near the end of our family Thanksgiving dinner in Connecticut. Our daughter Francesca in a pensive moment.
On this date one year ago: Party in Bethlehem Connecticut.
Party, Bethlehem. Connecticut
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had dinner with our friends Kimball and Patrizia Chen. I’m using my Panasonic GF1 now in situations where the light permits. Here’s Kimball declaiming on a bottle of Gaja Barbaresco (I think a 1997).
On this date last year: Guggenheim Museum, New York.
This is one of several not very successful images of this iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building that I’ve attempted over the past year.
The Guggenheim Museum, Manhattan
LITCHFIELD CONNECTICUT – A farm stand next to my regular hardware store. Still shooting very wide with the digital Leica.
On this day one year ago: Subway entrance.
Citicorp Center
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Another heavy day of meetings. We ended the day at the James Beard Foundation’s annual gala at the Four Seasons restaurant (my life seems to be centered around the Seagrams Building), I chair the board of the foundation – here’s a link: James Beard Foundation. I had planned on getting my photo of the day at the gala and came equipped with my Nikon D700 and a fast lens. But as I tried to take my first image I had a major “oh shit” moment: I had left the camera’s compact flash card home in my computer. This is a first for me. I always turn the camera on when I pick it up to leave home to check the battery and settings, and take a picture to make sure that everything works. Lesson re-learned.
So what to do? David Young was kind enough to lend me his iPhone. The iPhone is the Holga of this generation. There’s a bit of a learning curve to get a plausible image out of these things – I’m a long way from mastery. I took a couple of dozen images, one of which (ironically of David Young) seems ok to me. So here’s David on David’s iPhone:
November 10, 2010
On this day one year ago: Out my office window The subject matter suggests (accurately) that I was struggling to keep up with the photo-a-day pace in November of last year – November really is a rough month for me.
Out my window
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We’re planning a dinner party later in the week for which I’ll be cooking so I went to Agata and Valentina to sort out what’s fresh and seasonal. Maria had asked for scaloppine al limone so . . . we’re having scaloppine al limone. The rest of the menu is risotto with mushrooms (I found king oyster, mousseron, black trumpets, chanterelle and of course portobellos), baby zucchini, kale from out garden in Connecticut, and braised pumpkin, and an apricot tart with creme fraise. Here are some vegetables (mostly Treviso) in the market, taken with my Leica M9 and a 28mm Summicron lens.
Interestingly, maybe ironically, on this date one year ago we gave a dinner party featuring . . . mushrooms. Last year it was the mushrooms that I brought back from a trip to the Willamette Valley in Oregon: Mushroom dinner.
Dinner party
I’m going to try a similar picture Thursday night hoping that it can be more interesting.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I decided to cook today. We had in the refrigerator the end of the produce from our garden in Connecticut: an aubergine, some zucchini, some tomatoes and a few other odds and end. This obviously assembles easily into a ratatouille. Both images with my Leica M9 and a 40 mm Summicron C lens.
Mise en place:
Mise en place for ratatouille
And here about an hour and a half later is the assembled product, ready for final cooking.
Ratatouille
NAIROBI, KENYA – Here we are – out last day in Kenya. We went on a “food safari” in local markets with Hubert des Marais (an American from the Carolinas), a prominent chef who has become Fairmont’s executive chef in Kenya (or maybe East Africa). Our first stop was a large covered farmers’ market where local residents bring vegetables grown on plots in Nairobi.
Food Market
Cell phones are the primary means of communications; many residents lack electric power so business that offer the charge cell phones, like this one in the market, are common.
A cell phone charging service in the market
There’s a food court in the food market where it possible to buy lunch. The word “hotel” on the sign means “restaurant” in this context.
The largest foreign food influence is Indian. The Indians were brought in by the English to build the railroad from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. Indians also came to the region as traders, merchants and professionals. Here we see an Indian pastry shop.
An indian pastry shop
This is a former aircraft hanger, from the era when the airstrip was in the middle of Nairobi, converted to a mall for small merchants.
Shops
Hubert des Marais at lunch at Chowpaty, a terrific Indian dive. In terms of Indian regional cuisines, what we appeared to see was everything pretty much mixed together.
Hubert des Marais
Finally before packing for our flight back to New York we managed a few hours in the Nairobi National Museum. It focuses on primarily on natural history, ethnography and geology, geared roughly to a high school student. Here is a group of high school students lined up for admission:
Nairobi National Museum
NAIROBI, KENYA – We spent the morning visiting another remarkable charity: AmericaShare, which is sponsored by our safari organizer. It right in the middle of an extensive shantytown – a favella if it were in Brazil – and it provides a variety of services (including education) to badly at risk children in the area.
AmericaShare
AmericaShare
One of the needs identified by this program is reusable sanitary napkins which facilitate school attendance by teenage girls. They are manufactured on the spot.
AmericaShare
In a study in cultural contrast we had lunch at home with Anna Trzebinski and her father, Michael Cunningham-Reed. Anna is a talented fashion designer, her father a remarkable raconteur.
Anna Trzebinski
Anna Trzebinski
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Starbucks, 87th Street and Lexington Avenue. Could be anywhere in the world.
Starbuck's
Leica M9 and 35mm Summicron v. IV.
SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – I spent the morning exploring São Paulo on foot, and then made a pilgrimage to Vila Medeiros, a working class neighborhood in São Paulo that was about an hour’s drive from our hotel, to visit Mocotó, a restaurant and bar specializing in food from the far north east of Brazil, and Cachaça, the potent Brazilian sugarcane drink. Here’s a review – be sure to read all six pages: Mocotó The only English-speaker is the chef, Rodrigo Oliveira, a charismatic young man who is viewed as one of the most creative rising chefs in the country. He ended up joining me for lunch and providing a large sampling of items on the menu. Rodrigo is doing serious research on indigenous ingredients. Here he is showing me his collection of beans:
Rodrigo
Leica M9 and 35mm Summicron v. IV.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had dinner at Balthazar with some old friends. Balthazar is a wormhole in space and time transporting one to Brassaï’s Paris de Nuit.
Balthazar
Leica M9 and 50mm Summilux lens
NEW MILFORD CONNECTICUT – I went to Clamps, a roadside burger stand on route 202, for a burger for lunch, arriving just before the 2:00 PM closing, in time to place an order. By the time that I got my wits together to reach for camera the closed sign had gone up.
Clamps is a dying breed: a roadside hamburger stand that’s seasonal, has limited hours and isn’t part of a chain. The following is from Roadfood: ”The business card of Clamp’s Hamburger stand says, NO SIGN, NO ADDRESS, NO PHONE, JUST GOOD FOOD. In fact, there is a sign about the size of a license plate on the side of the wood-frame hut: “Clamp’s Est. 1939.” Despite the lack of a billboard and a street address, you will have no trouble finding this place because there are cars and people crowded around any time it’s open … which is late April to early September every day from 11am to 2pm and from 5pm to 8pm.
“Edwin and Sylvia Clamp started the business sixty-six years ago, and now their great-nephew, Tom Mendell, is the boss. Tom told us that since 1939 Clamp’s has never advertised and never had a phone (and therefore was never in the phone book), and while it did have a prominent sign, when the sign blew down in a windstorm back in the 1960s, it was not replaced.”
Clamps
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Back from Connecticut and a rainy weekend. I had spent the weekend putting a relatively new (to me) camera through its paces, a Nikon D700. I plan on using the D700 primarily for available light photograph in poor light, so I’ve put it back in its bag to wait for the next party, wedding, dinner or whatever. For street use I’m back to my trusty Leica M9, which I prefer as long as there’s enough light to manually focus. This picks up on my “Look up – don’t worry of it makes you look like a tourist” theme.
Lexington Avenue and 93rd Street
Leica M9 and 35mm Summicron Asph.
WARREN. CONNECTICUT – We had 12 long-standing friends over for lunch – this is the lunch that I did the grocery shopping for on Thursday.
Mary Jo
Leica M9 with 35 mm Summicron Asph.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had dinner at Island, a restaurant near us on Madison Avenue, with Alexander (our son), Laura (his girlfriend) and Laura’s parents. This is a rare image of Maria.
Maria
Nikon D700 50mm f1.4G lens.
WASHINGTON CONNECTICUT – Cocktails at CT, a new restaurant being opened by friends on Route 202 in Washington CT. The menu will consist of all locally grown produce and meat. Here’s a link to an article in the Litchfield County Times: Article about CT
CT
Leica M9 with 35mm Summicron lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A Commanderie de Bordeaux dinner at the Knickerbocker Club. Wines included the 1982, 1989 and 1990 vintages of Château Mouton Rothschild and Château Lafite Rothschild, as well as the 1983 Mouton:
1983 Ch. Mouton Rothschild
Leica M9 and 35mm Summicron.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Dinner with Gary and Diana Fisketjon. Photographically there was a lot of interest – the Fisketjons recently moved to a loft on the very top floor of a building in the financial district (next to the New York Fed) that has been converted to residential use. Out the windows there are marvelous eagle gargoyles and views of lower Manhattan. I concentrated on the gargoyles (which face outward, so from the apartment we see their backs). What I learned on editing the pictures is that the backs of gargoyles are no more interesting than the backs of people. So out of a large group of photos from the evening I selected one of Gary. Nikon D700 with 50mm f1.4 (my usual night interior kit).
Gary Fisketjon
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I attended a wine dinner with a dozen or so friends. We sampled a half dozen vintages of Château Pichon Longueville Baron, a so-called super second. One of our guests was Jean-Rene Matignon, the winemaker at Pichon Baron.
Pichon Baron dinner
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – A long day of food related activities, mostly outdoors. Unseasonably low temperatures and heavy overcast skies generally made photography unpleasant. This is from a breakfast of beignets and cappuccino at Cafe’ Beignet in the French Quarter. Continued a self-quided beignet tour at the more famous Cafe du Monde but the crowds were appalling and the light very poor.
Cafe' Beignet
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – Lunch at the Parkway Bakery and Tavern in New Orleans. Known for outstanding po’boy sandwiches – the fried oyster po’boy is heavenly. Thanks to Dickie Brennan for bringing me to this icon. This is Jay Nix, the owner. Here is a podcast featuring Jay: Jay Nix podcast
Parkway Bakery and Tavern
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Most Fridays I have lunch with my son Alexander, usually at Sidecar, upstairs from PJ Clarke’s. Today I was carrying a camera.
Alexander Campbell
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Dinner at Corton under the care of Chef Paul Leibrandt. A remarkable meal.
Dinner at Corton
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Madison Square at night.
Madison Square and the Shake Shack
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